"On Golden Pond" is a love story of Ethel and Norman Thayer, who are returning to their summer home on Gold Pond for the 44th year. He is a retired professor, nearing 80, with heart palpitations and a failing memory, but still as tart-tongued, observant and eager for life as ever. Ethel, 10 years younger, and the perfect foil for Norman, delights in all the small things which they have enriched, and continue to enrich their long life together. They are visited by their divorced, middle-aged daughter and her dentist fiance, who then go off to Europe, leaving his teenage son behind for the summer. The boy quickly becomes the grandchild the elderly couple longed for, and as Norman revels in taking the ward fishing and thrusting god books at him, he also learns some lessons about modern teenage awareness--and slang.